The Hypnotherapeutic Wedding Catharsis, probably chapter 2

Bonnie had told me that hypnotherapy affects people differently, according to different rules and time tables. I began experiencing a difference immediately.

While my first priority in going to her had been to address the mantra nobody wants to be in the same room with me, on her intake form, which she sent via email the week before, she asked clients to list the 4 most important things, and she went through each one with me when during our hour-long chat before the hypnotherapy session Saturday, a month and a day ago. I didn't keep a copy of that sheet, though I wish I would have now, but I'm pretty sure I listed these:

1. Nobody wants...
2. Motivation/Focus on school work
3. Health/Body: maintain a healthy lifestyle, mind, body, soul, spirit
4. LOST (I know this sounds insane, but I've become pretty obsessed with this television show; I watch it several hours a day while I'm grading papers, cooking, cleaning, working out, changing clothes, whatever; it stays on pretty much all the time, though I have it off right now and during other times when I'm intensely focused on a task, like reading theory or writing).

We worked through the first one on the list; took us 4 hours of talking, me with my voice and with my first finger ("yes") and thumb ("no") jerks. It required past-life inspection and resulted in my "remembering" where I first internalized the message; the exercises we did together was supposed to have allowed me to replace that message into the body that received it and leave it behind, to cleanse it from my aura, or something. Whatever it was supposed to do, like I said, is irrelevant; what it is doing is much more interesting anyway.

For the first few days after the session, I felt like I was on top of the world. The situations in my life were unusually clear to me, and my position in my situations was also obvious; before, I'd not been able to see those things clearly because of the distortion caused by the internal mantra playing on a loop (for 16 years....). Within just a few days, the fog around me was clearing, and the reality of my situation began to dawn on me. I decided that I wanted to believe what Bonnie had said to me about my power and my purpose in this world. I decided that I am going to believe it, and so I have started believing it, and I am believing even right this instant.

(for 16 years is a LOST reference.)

This knowledge--that I am exactly what I am, and that actualizing that is powerful--didn't come upon me suddenly; it took several weeks, whirling around in my mind, and about a zillion speedtalkingconversations with Lisa Day, and a lot of LOST to get there. It was a few days before the wedding when Shannon's mother sent me the following email:

I have waited a while before sending this as my heart won't let me rest without speaking my mind. I cannot believe that you have turned to dishonesty for revenge. We only go through life one trip around and what we make of ourselves is just that. We, I, trusted that you were a good person inside and a fair one. Had I known from the beginning that you were just using Shannon as a stepping stone to boost your ego and advance yourself in life, I would not have accepted you into mine. Call it poor judgement, stupidity, whatever, you got what you wanted. I will help Shannon pay your debts...not for you, but to prevent her from struggling financially. That was very dirty of you to leave owing, but if you can live with the dirt, we sure aren't going to let it get us down. May the rest of the world see you for what you truely are! What goes around, comes around.

At first, I wanted to write her back and tell her she had it all wrong, though I respected that if there are "sides" to be taken here, as Shannon's mother, she's definitely on the right one, and more power to her for sending an email, speaking her mind. It's damn-near feminist of her, so I'm kind of proud of the effort and the intention. I ended up not answering at all, upon the advice of my bff. I mean, I agree with at least part of what she said: "May the rest of the world see you for what you truely [sic, and she's a fucking school teacher?] are." That's all I've ever wanted anyway, is for the world to know me for who I AM and for me to know that person to and be proud of her. I've just wanted exactly what she wants for me, so "we always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view." Tangled up in Blue, indeed.

Anyway.

I ended up also feeling mostly affirmed and relieved (by the email) that I'd made the right choice. Vicki's email might as well have been scripted by her daughter, and I got out of that whole situation to avoid just this sort of victimology. Even so, I took a lot of messy feelings with me when I got in the car Friday morning to drive to northern Kentucky to Zach and Jolinda's wedding.

The night before, I burned an audio book from Librivox.org onto disk for the drive down. Six hours of Willa Cather's O, Pioneers (1913). First of all, it's an absolutely amazing story if you've never read it and need a new one to get into, and second, I highly recommend the Librivox recording. The woman who reads it does a fine job.

I listened to the story on the way to Kentucky. It's about a six-hour drive, so I heard almost the whole thing before I made it to Perry Park Golf Resort in Perry Park near Owenton, Kentucky, near Cincinnati. Listening to that novel as I drove put me in an interesting frame of mind. For six hours before seeing Zach and Jolinda again for the first time, I had been a "reader." My mind was set to "spectator" mode, and I was ready to hear a good story. Turns out Zach's wedding had a few to tell me too. Being in this present-yet-removed position was at first strange-feeling because, typically, with the mantra, I feel disconnected from everything around me and isolated within my own body. Sometimes I used to feel imprisoned by the space around me when I was in public places with people all around me. All in the same room with me. Imagine what they must be thinking. They simply must.

But at the rehearsal, when I saw them again and met all these new people, the defensiveness, the fear, the self-loathing... all of it was gone. I was just there to play a part, to observe, to watch what was going on around me and take it all in. Being in the spectator frame of mind helped me constantly remember that while I was having my own experience over here, Zach and Jolinda were having their own experience over there, and it was, for this weekend, the most important thing. I felt like I could help that happen, because I had, sometime on the drive down here and amid O, Pioneers, I allowed myself to believe what Bonnie had said: that I am powerful, and that there is an energy and goodness inside me that other people just have to see to believe. It wasn't a conscious choice, is all I'm sayin'. It was much deeper than that; I didn't know I was making it.

But I did, and when I started meeting people, I was fully present, aware, in-tuned with my surroundings, and in control of my self in a way I've never quite experienced. I was embracing the power of being me, and I was remembering with each breath that this power has to remain in check, otherwise, things can get ugly, fast. So I stayed focused on what was happening right in front of me, and I let myself be a good, fun, smart, sexy woman in front of everyone in the room, and you know what?

They love me.

They told me so. Strangers. Walked up to me, spent minutes with me, then hugged me and said things like "you're as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside" and "thank you for being my cheerleader this weekend." Said things like "I am so glad I got to finally meet you" and "Even though you're a small person, you're huge!" Said things like "Zach never told me how hot you are." (okay, I made that last one up.)

I was blown away at every turn. I was letting people see me (like, literally, tiny tanktop at the wedding, strutting around in 3-inch stilettos, but also, like, figuratively, in that I had let my guard down and was allowing these experiences to happen to all of me... for all of me to happen to all these experiences). People's responses ranged from content to completely enthralled by my splendor and majesty. Everyone wanted to be in my room. And I was having the time of my life. Zach and Jolinda's wedding will go down in history as one of the best nights of my life.

I woke up unnaturally early the next morning and was on the road back to Michigan by seven. Ever since, I've been kind of trying to just process all that's happened over the last several months as it's been put into a new perspective by this weekend. Before this weekend, I didn't see the two previous events--the divorce and the hypnotherapist--as connected in any real way, but after this weekend, I see them as a set of three choices that I've made for myself, the first making way for the second two to even be possible. Something shifted in me these last few months, and I'm finally starting to reap some of the reward for the hard years and hard choices I've made these last few years. If it is as Zora Neale Hurston has written, that "there are years that ask questions and years that answer," I'm in an answering year.

The Hypnotherapeutic Wedding Catharsis, probably chapter 1

"Nobody wants to be in the same room with me."

Don't ask me how I developed such a mantra, but it's been with me for years now. Part of me thinks it comes along with calling oneself an intellect; I mean, there's just something about that phrase that's isolating. Add to isolation the notorious "imposter syndrome" that accompanies calling oneself damn-near anything, but particularly anything which requires a certain level of skill or sophistication such as, let's say, literary analysis (though some might argue such skills are worthless... of course, they'd be using the selfsame skills to construct an argument, so...).

Anyway.

Part of me thinks it comes along with being with someone I lost respect for years ago. It's like countertransference: I didn't want to be in the same room as her, and that felt completely normal to me, so it would only make good sense that she wouldn't want to be in the same room with me. Or perhaps I developed it after I admitted sexualized childhood experiences; stigma, shame, and self-defeatism come with that territory. I wore them as shields.

However it appeared, there it's been, entrenched deep within my core for years, and nothing I did unfixed it. It persisted. It stayed. It remained. I could count on it when other mantras came and went. Mantras about school, exercise, food. Mantras about motivation, drive, stamina. Mantras about leaving her, leaving her, leaving her. They didn't take. "Nobody wants to be in the same room with me" took.

But three events in my life have recently loosened this mantra's hold on me: I divorced myself from my former partner, I visited a hypnotherapist, and I decided, for just one night, to allow myself to finally give in and just believe in myself, in what I'm doing, in what I'm capable of. But first, the big D.

Shannon and I had been together for 4 years. We met when I was in my last semester as an undergraduate at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky. We'd both signed up for Dr. Day's ENG35? class, American Literature after 1865 (I think). 8am! Spring 2006. I started my MA in Literature the following semester, which means I confessed my childhood sexual experiences to my family, my friends, my therapist, and social services. I also started my fast descent into a deep, dark post-trauma depression that lasted through the winter and well into 2007 and even 2008 though the worst of it was that first year. The best of it was also during that time; Shannon used to say that I became raw from the self-scathing, self-loathing, self-mutilation (in a psychological sense). I was withering away: I shaved my head, lost a lot of weight, and dived into trauma theory to survive. Writers like Cathy Caruth, Dominick LaCapra, Gabrielle Schwab, Dorothy Allison, Sigmund Freud... I wouldn't have survived without them. I couldn't find joy in anything except for the knowledge that every word I read lead me one step closer to identifying with my new self. I've never been so deep inside myself as I was during these dark times. What I found there was at first weak, dark, and sad, but over time, I've come to recognize it as my lifesource, a place of life, light, white energy, my divine spirit. I've said it over and over: trauma theory was my salvation.

Shannon was a source of great comfort to me at the time. We fell out of romantic love slowly over time, when first I was depressed for a year and then she followed quickly on my heels the following year. There were so many times when I convinced myself to stay with her because she had done so much for me; I felt like I owed her the exact same amount of time that she had given to me; I'd later repeat this motion a hundred times, usually with time, but also with money. Nothing was ever even; we were never square. I always owed. In her eyes, I still do. Just ask her mom. (quick jab)

Anyway.

I should have left a thousand times before. I complained for years. I felt completely incapacitated. Like I couldn't make the hard choice because I feared the consequences. I feared that everyone who knew me would think I was a bitch for leaving her, a bad person for not helping her pay for the house we lived in, keep up the animals we raised together, supporting her while she went to school like she supported me. I was about ready to talk myself out of it again until synchronicity came at me from all sides; suddenly, I was hearing the universe, channeled through the voices of my most trusted friends and allies, shouting get the fuck out while you still can.

So I did.

Best decision I've ever made, period.

Moving on.

About 2 months later (I guess, I don't do time), I found a business card at a coffee shop for a hypnotherapist/Reiki healer/"Angel reader," so I made an appointment. Sixty-five bucks for as long as I wanted to talk? I'd pay almost anyone to agree to that. ;) I arrived at the house, which was about a mile from my apartment in a neighborhood I know well. I was comfortable as I knocked on the red door, and the hefty, 40-something woman who greeted me was so kind-faced and maternal that I instantly relaxed and was ready to spill. And spill I did: we talked for an hour about my life and my reason for coming there before we even went into the hypno-room. During that time, I told her about my childhood experience and how I'd worked through it using trauma theory and literature. We addressed spirituality, clairvoyance, psychic abilities, previous experiences with energies and auras... stuff I'm completely comfortable talking about but am not quite sure how much I buy into all of it. In the end, it doesn't matter if I buy it, all that matters is what I end up believing from it... how my experiences with these interactions change the way I make choices about my life.

Most important, I'd find out later, of all we talked about in that intake interview was the impact my Poppy has had on my life. Poppy -- David Elroy Morrison -- was the chief of police in Horse Cave, Kentucky, for 23 years before my birth. He'd already raised a daughter and a granddaughter when I was born in 1980, but he took me in too, and taught me to sing, to read, to joke... so many things I still love and cherish most in life. He started them all in me. I stayed overnight with them all the time while my parents lived across the street, but when my parents began moving around a lot, I usually stayed summer, a week or two during winter breaks, and long weekends. When we moved farther away, I only got out there summers, and when I turned 15, it was no longer cool to do that, so I stopped. I last saw Poppy in the fall of 1998 when I stopped through Horse Cave on one of my many trips between Western Kentucky University and Greensburg, Kentucky, "home" for the moment. I told him that if I ever married a man, I wanted him to be just like my Poppy, and I told him how much I loved him. I knew I would never see him again.

We went into the other room, and I sat in a white recliner in the corner of a small room which also contained a wood stove, a massage bed, several non-descrip "religious" relics, candles, and soothing music. A few plants. Very soothing. I reclined all the way back and spread a blanket over me. I was very comfortable. She was trustworthy. She talked me into a relaxed state as I tensed and untensed all the major muscle groups in my body, imagined the various locations or feelings or colors she described, and released the worries and fears she rehearsed from our conversation prior. Once she got me relaxed and in the zone, she began to establish the rules of our communication as she said she would do: she first explained that she was going to be addressing her instructions and questions to three different parts of me, Ami, Ami's unconscious mind, and Ami's higher self. Ami can speak, but Ami's higher self and unconscious mind cannot, so she established, patiently and by asking each of these parts to move fingers of their choosing, the signs for "yes" and "no" ("yes" was a jerk of my right index finger, "no" a jerk of my thumb).

Through guiding suggestions and then questions, she revealed this scene to me from my unconscious, which she believes comes from one of my previous lives:

I was standing at the top of a long stairway that broke off in two different directions toward the bottom, and I took the one on right to lead me through the door at the end; inside was a library circa 1840ish with a paper-strewn desk and books in shelves stacked to the ceiling, a huge window with the curtain open, and even one of those sliding ladders to allow for reaching books closer to the 10- or 12-feet high ceilings. I was wearing pants and penny loafers, so I assume I was a servant. I couldn't read the words on the books, and a few hours later, I was standing off to the side in the dining room, watching a group of people eat, feeling less like I had to be there than it was the normal thing I always did; it was my job. Nobody wanted to be in the same room with me because I was a slave; nobody sent me positive vibes.

I was in love with the master's daughter, and she, of course, wanted nothing to do with me. I didn't stay there my whole life; I later worked on a train as a waiter, and just before I died, I lived in a big city (think Boston or Philadelphia) and was mostly content with my life, though I wish I'd made more connections with people.

Oh yeah, and I was a black man!

When I "came out" of this "memory," I was crying; I felt great relief, realizing that some of these messages I've been battling have been coming from a place that's been inaccessible to me. After the hypnosis session ended, Bonnie said some very strange and glorious things to me. She told me that I'm a powerful person whose purpose in life is to bring light to the world, to help people see the world in a different way. To reflect positive energy. She encouraged me to educate myself so that I can use this powerful energy to invite good things into my life instead of to keep good things out, because this kind of power can be focused like a laser beam toward either of these tasks. I realized recently that I had embraced the mantra that nobody wanted to be in the same room with me as a defense against the possibility that if I came out as everything that I am, nobody would want to stick around. I feared that being fearlessly me would result in negative consequences that I was unprepared to face.

I shared some of this in its less articulate form with Bonnie just before I walked out, and she said, "when you feel like this, you just call upon your Poppy." I was kind of taken aback, because, you know, it's not cool to talk about the dead in such a familiar and casual way. So I asked her how she knew that my Poppy could hear me, and she told me, "Oh, he came in with you. He's been here the whole time."

...to be continued